"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
That's it folks. That's the entire text of the second amendment to the Constitution. I suspect that most people haven't actually read the text since their days in high school, if then, but they wax eloquent over what it does and doesn't mean.
For the first 140 years or so of the existence of the republic, there wasn't really much conversation about the second amendment. At the beginning, regulation consisted largely of apprehended criminals being punished for their crimes and their guns being confiscated until they had served their time. Most of the original delegates to the Constitutional Convention saw the second amendment as allowing the states to maintain militias, now called the National Guard, and guns were used for hunting. Not hunting for sport mind you, hunting for food. The concept of "leisure time" was most uncommon among any but the wealthiest citizens, which would have included the rich, white men who were the delegates. And, of course, shooting was a central component of the military.
In 1939, the Supreme Court, in United States v Miller, ruled that interstate commerce in sawed off shotguns could be regulated by the government because a sawed off shotgun had nothing to do with with the maintenance of a well regulated militia. Thus the right of the Congress to determine which weapons were or were not appropriately allowed in interstate commerce.
Seventy years later, in 2008, the Court revisited that ruling in District of Columbia v Heller, and in that ruling overturned the DC hand gun ban saying that Miller was an anomaly since a sawed off shotgun could not possibly be used for any legal purpose. That still allowed the government to determine what weapons could or could not be allowed in interstate commerce by determining if a specific type of weapon could be used for a legal purpose.
In 2010, in McDonald v City of Chicago, the Court strengthened the rights of the individual, outside of the well regulated militia, to possess weapons under the protection of the second amendment.
So here we are. Twenty six people are dead in Newtown, Connecticut. There was a shooting at a hospital in Alabama today. We've had a bunch of these horrific incidents over the past couple of decades. What should we do? There are twenty times more gun deaths in the U.S. than in the other twenty two wealthiest countries combined. Eighty seven percent of all gun deaths of children in the twenty three wealthiest countries occur here. And this despite that fact that overall crime and gun crime has declined in the U.S. over the past decade or so.
What the hell is going on? As I see it, and that's what counts here because this blog is entitled "The World According to Me," we have made guns too easy to get and mental health services to hard to get. Any solution must address both these issues.
I don't believe it is necessary, or appropriate to ban guns. Also, I believe that ship has sailed. Guns are part of American culture, for better and worse. An outright ban will simply promote a huge black market in guns, think prohibition, and make criminals of perfectly law abiding citizens. Not only that, target shooting is fun. In my profligate youth, OK, not really so profligate, but while I was in summer camp, I enjoyed shooting and even earned the NRA rank of sharpshooter second bar. In those days, the NRA was an advocate regulation of firearms.
Having said all that, I also advocate registration of all guns, background checks and mandatory safety and use classes before someone may purchase a gun. Owners should be required to report any theft or loss of a weapon to the local police so a national data base of weapons that are no longer accounted for can be maintained.
Extra capacity ammunition clips and bullets that are designed exclusively to kill, like hollow points, as well as automatic weapons should be banned. Current owners of such clips, bullets and weapons may keep them, but they must be registered. Penalties for failure to register or report theft/loss should be steep and cost of registration should be moderate. Concealed weapons permits should be allowed only for those who can prove a need and those permits should be granted very sparingly.
As for mental health and addiction services, right now the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from denying coverage on the basis of a prior existing condition. In 2014, mental health and addiction services will be part of the essential benefits package that must be offered by the health care exchanges and Medicaid, so accessibility is about to be dramatically increased.
This is all great, assuming people are aware of their need for assistance. The stigma attached to using mental health services must be removed and friends and relatives of those who need these services have to be willing to step forward and steer patients to those resources. These school shooting rampages of recent years have been largely perpetrated by young, white, middle and upper middle class males. After the fact we learn of the warning signs that were missed by those in a position to direct the shooters to get help. Parents, teachers and, frankly, the public at large need to be educated as to for what they are looking.
None of these proposed solutions will be fool proof and all will take time to accomplish. But they are a start, and we definitely need to start. It behooves the public to push the NRA to return to its original policy of advocating reasonable gun regulations. Right now, the NRA is no less than an accessory to multiple murders. That must stop. How to convince the NRA? Take it over. Members elect the leaders of the organization. We need to learn NRA governance structures and co-opt them in the name of public safety.
Finally, gun advocates keep saying that if all the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, or the movie goers in Aurora, Colorado had guns this could have been stopped. Am I the only one who thinks that a kindergarten teacher with a gun locked in her/his desk drawer could not have been counted on to get to that gun before he /she was shot, or that hundreds of panicked movie fans firing their guns in the dark, smoky slaughterhouse that the assailant had created would merely have increased the death toll and engendered even more panic? The idea that more guns in more hands is safer is patently absurd. It is true that guns don't kill people, people kill people, but guns in the hands of unstable people make death more likely.
